Posts Tagged ‘Dwan’

Tom “durrr” Dwan on His Way To a Massive Year Online in 2010

Tom “durrrr” Dwan, who has taken a stranglehold on the 2010 online high-stakes profit lead, absolutely crushed Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies for over $1.2 million last night.

The sick $500/$1,000 action sessions seen in 2009 have been almost non-existent this year. Although there could be any number of explanations, the most likely is simple: The biggest action players in the game haven’t been around.

Patrik Antonius has struggled to turn a profit in any session he plays, forcing him to keep his game to lower-stakes in an attempt to stem the bleeding.

Phil Ivey has been little more than a ghost, playing just a handful of sessions all year.

Isildur1 seems to have stepped down from the big games and, for the first few months of the year, Dwan was still trying to work his way out of the massive hole he dug himself at the end of 2009.

All that was left were Sahamies and some CardRunners pros not known to spark sick action at the nosebleeds.

Dwan, already up over $5.5 million on the year, began yesterday’s session with Odonkor1 at $100/$200 No-Limit Hold’em, beating the Swedish pro rumored to be Joel Nordkvist out of $225,048.

After completing the four-hour battle, Dwan took five hours off before returning to Full Tilt to sit at the $500/$1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Ivey Thunderdome, to play the man himself heads-up.

As has been his style this year, Phil Ivey only stuck around for 11 hands, leaving the game down $30k.

After another three and a half hour break, Dwan returned to the $500/$1,000 PLO tables, this time sitting across from Sahamies.

This match was absolutely brimming with action, with over a dozen pots worth more than $200k. The largest pot rang in at a sick $557,994, marking the fourth biggest played all year.

Dwan came out on top of all three of the largest pots, all worth over $400k, and by the end of the session, he had made over $1.2 million from Sahamies, putting him at around $7.1 million in profit for the year.

He’s now officially out of the 2009 hole he built and well on his way to another massive year online.

Weekly Poker News update

Danish pro Allan Baekke won EPT Snowfest, Isildur1 confirmed he would play the PartyPoker Big Game, numerous poker rooms launched 2010 WSOP qualifiers and Tom “durrrr” Dwan continued to dominate online.

There were still some lesser-known poker stories, however, and as part of our weekly Poker News update we’ve compiled them below.

This week we’ll take a look at a new Full Tilt TV show, the UB Poker Perfect 10 Challenge and a new proposal for online gambling legislation.

UB Poker Introduces Perfect 10 Challenge

Online poker site UB Poker launched a new promotion this week that gives players the opportunity to win big by playing in a series of $10 tournaments every day.

The Perfect 10 Challenge will run from now until April 30 with 10 special $10 buy-in tournaments hosted every day.

UB Poker will award over $100,000 in bonus cash to players who top the Perfect 10 Leaderboard with $20,000 going to the player who wins the most cash in the $10 tournaments.

“The launch of the Perfect 10 and the $100K Leaderboard Challenge are the first of many new and innovative promotions set to be introduced at UB,” said Team UB member Joe Sebok.

“UB has a completely revamped approach to 2010 and will be working to keep its entire community in the know about all new promotions and events. The offers will be more exciting, more unique, and each one geared towards rewarding our players for playing with us like never before.”

To learn more about the promo check Ubet.com

Sofia Lovgren

First Female on Team PKR

Online poker site PKR introduced the first female member of its Team PKR this week.

Twenty-year-old Sofia “welllbet” Lövgren of Gothenburg, Sweden, will now carry the PKR flag where ever she plays poker.

“It’s a pleasure to be the first female on the Team,” says Sofia.

“It’s a very good opportunity for me to get to play big live tournaments and take my online game to the live scene. Playing poker and travelling are my favorite things, so this will be a great experience.”

Lövgren had been a regular on the PKR tables since 2008 and emerged as one of the biggest earners on the site.

Full Tilt Launches Poker Lounge

Hot on the heels of PokerStars new cash game TV show, Full Tilt Poker has launched a high stakes Sit and Go show.

The Poker Lounge will pit one qualifier against five seasoned pros in a $20,000 buy-in freezeout. It will follow a winner-takes-all format with $120,000 dedicated to the ultimate victor.

Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey have already been confirmed to appear on the show, which will be filmed in London and broadcast on Channel 4 in the U.K.

Qualifiers to appear on the show will run from now until July 4. There will be eight $22,000 packages up for grabs. Each satellite will carry a $640 buy-in and run every Sunday at 19:30 GMT.

To learn more visit our Full Tilt Poker review.

McDermott Updates Online Gambling Legislation

Rep. Jim McDermott wants the proceeds from taxing online gambling to go towards foster care in U.S.

McDermott, who introduced a bill that would regulate and tax the online gambling industry last year, updated his legislation this Thursday so that a percentage of the potential revenue generated from online gambling would go towards foster care programs.

The bill would see a 6% state tax and a 2% federal tax on all online poker deposits. McDermott proposed that foster care programs receive 25% of the revenue from the federal tax.

McDermott cited the recession and the subsequent lack of funding for social services as a reason to funnel revenue from online gambling to those programs.

PokerStars Announces France Poker Series

This week PokerStars moved one step closer to sponsoring a poker tour in every country.

The online poker giant announced the France Poker Series, which will include stops in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Divonne-les-Bains, Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, Lyon, Forges-les-Eaux, Paris and Morocco.

Buy-ins will range from €1,200 to €2,500 with the cash satellites only available to players from France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the UK

It’s likely that members of Team PokerStars France, which includes Vanessa Rousso, Arnauld Mattern, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Sebastien Chabal and Thomas Bichon, will make appearances on the new tour.

2010 Online High-Stakes Review

While it’s no shock seeing Tom “durrrr” Dwan on the top of the leader board with over $3.4 million as we near the end of the first quarter of 2010, it is that Phil Ivey has barely played.

In total, Ivey has logged just 4,351 hands this year. And while he ‘s showing a $194,074 profit, every big name in the biggest games have played more hands.

In the meantime, Alexander “PostflopAction” Kostritsyn, winner of the 2008 Aussie Millions, has had tremendous success on Full-Tilt in 2010 so far, earning over $2.2 million to put him into second place.

Kostritsyn has proved himself to be a master of mixed games, with more than $1.6 million of his profits coming from the high-stakes 7-Game tables.

But perhaps the biggest story of the year has been Cole South.

He held the profit lead with as much as $3.6 million to start the year, but a recent month-long downswing has left him with only $1.2 million of it.

The most volatile players ever to hit the digital felt made his first splash late in 2009, making over $5 million in just three days from Dwan.

Identity unknown, Isildur1 went on to play the biggest pots in online history, the largest worth over $1.3 million against Patrik Antonius, before losing that and another $2 million in just two weeks.

The majority of the losses came at the hands of Brian Hastings, including more than $4.2 million in a single session, and with the unknown Swede returning to the tables again this year, we’ve already seen more than one epic rematch.

Despite playing slightly more conservatively, Isildur1 has managed to go on a $3.6 million dollar swing. And even though Hastings still appears to still be getting the best of him, he’s currently sitting with $422,400 in profit.

Antonius has been another shocking story.

He absolutely crushed the leader board last year, but has been unable to find his stride in 2010, down almost $3.8 million since the first of January.

In addition to his massive losses, Antonius has also been getting dismantled in the durrrr Challenge, Dwan’s lead extending to almost $2 million.

Finally, since the 30-day suspension of his Full-Tilt pro status, Brian Townsend has struggled to turn a profit in almost every session he has played, losing over $1.9 million so far this year.

It’s anybody’s guess as to what will happen over the next nine months, but the two questions most online rail birds are still hoping to have answered appear to be: When will Ivey decide to put up some numbers and just who is Isildur1?